Virtue signalling, hate mobs and victim status and use of social media

Now I know you’ve all heard about the Jussie Smollett controversy. If you haven’t, where have you been?! Let me quickly fill you in. Jussie Smollett staged his own hate crime in the form of a threatening letter and an attack. Yes, he ​staged his own attack.

Jussie is African American and openly gay and told police that his attackers shouted ‘this is MAGA country’ – MAGA referring to the Trump headliner of ‘make America great again’. The police and the media described this as a serious hate crime and investigated thoroughly (unfortunately for Jussie). The police discovered the two assailants were paid $3,500 to stage the attack.
But why would anyone want to do that?

Social media is a feeding ground for virtue signalling and victim seeking. Virtue signalling manifests itself in a number of ways, everything from vegans promoting their agenda by guilt tripping meat eaters, to gym bros posting how much they’re deadlifting. When you break down why people do what they do on social media, a lot of the time it is to somehow try and prove they are better than other people.

Victim seeking happened most obviously in the case of Jussie, an intersectional successful actor who had everything going for him – who instead sought out sympathy from others by staging his own hate crime.

This victim mentality, I think, is partly because of the mass virtue signaling on social media that causes people to feel jealous, envious and essentially just sorry for themselves when they compare their own life to someone who has it better.

You’re always going to find someone who has it better than you just as much as you’re going to find someone who has it worse than you. What’s the point in being aspirational? Be
inspired by others success and carve this out for yourself, rather than assuming the role as the victim, it’s not going to help you.